Uncovering
Happiness
OVERCOMING DEPRESSION WITH
MINDFULNESS A N D S E L F -COMPASSION
ELISHA GOLDSTEIN, PhD
ALSO BY ELISHA GOLDSTEIN
The Now Effect: How a Mindful Moment
Can Change the Rest of Your Life
Mindfulness Meditations for the Anxious Traveler:
Quick Exercises to Calm Your Mind
A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook
(coauthored with Bob Stahl, PhD)
Mahatma Gandhi, the famed leader of India’s nonviolent in-
dependence movement, once described depression as a dryness
of the heart that sometimes made him want to run away from
the world. The Dalai Lama referred to it as the thoughts and
emotions that undermine the experience of inner peace. Writer
John Keats told of the hopelessness that depression created in
his soul: “If I were under water, I would scarcely kick to come to
the top.”
Every part of the mind and body can feel the weight of
depression. It hijacks thoughts and feelings, influences
behavior and choices, eats away at physical and mental health.
It can be a serious medical illness that steals happiness and
overshadows sufferers with darkness. It touches all of us, either
directly or indirectly. Each year, twenty-five million Americans
have an episode of major depression; many have experienced it
before and will again in the future.
Depression has many faces. Some depressed people function
relatively normally throughout their lives despite ever-present,
low-grade feelings of chronic unhappiness. Others become
incapacitated with rolling bouts of self-loathing thoughts and
murky mazes of negative feelings that clog the mind. Many
discover that activities that once felt playful, pleasurable, or
satisfying now bring no happiness and are difficult to do. The
ability to control thoughts and actions seems lost.
You may have experienced depression in the past. Or you
may be depressed right now. Perhaps you have felt its spirit-
sapping symptoms—difficulty concentrating, lack of motivation,
boredom, fatigue, anxiety, insomnia, irritability, guilt, feelings
of worthlessness, emptiness, and sadness, and the incessant
nagging of automatic negative thoughts—and have even
considered suicide.
“What’s the point of living?” you may ask. “No one can help
me. Nothing’s ever going to change.” You may feel so full of
despair that, like Keats, you would scarcely kick to come up
from under water.
Your feelings are very real. When you are depressed, you feel
But that doesn’t mean your situation is hopeless.
Here’s the thing about depression: It tells you lies. It makes you
believe that thoughts are facts. It can even take away every last
ounce of hope in your soul.
In the following pages, I’ll show you why there is so much
reason to feel optimistic. I’ll explain how huge advances in
mindfulness, neuroscience, and extensive studies of the
depressed brain have brought about major breakthroughs in
what we know about depression’s triggers and treatments. I’ll
show you how you can use a variety of straightforward tools and
techniques to break depression’s hold on you and begin to
uncover the happiness that is the essential core of who you truly
are.
There is hope. You can feel better. By following the steps in this
book, you can take back control of your mind, your mood, and
your life.
Your Brain’s Own Natural Antidepressant Power
When you hear the word antidepressant, you probably think of a
pill: a medication used to treat your illness. Medications are one
kind of antidepressant. But they’re not the only kind.
Science is now showing that we also have natural
antidepressants within our brains. Natural antidepressants are
mindful mindsets (thoughts and behaviors) that build us up
instead of tear us down and allow us to help ourselves
improve our own moods.
These natural antidepressants can be gathered into five main
categories:
1. Mindfulness: a flexible and unbiased state of mind where
you are open and curious about what is present, have
perspective, and are aware of choices.
2. Self-compassion: a state of mind where you understand
your own suffering and use mindfulness, kindness, and
loving openness to hold it nonjudgmentally and consider
it part of the human condition.
3. Purpose: a state of mind where you are actively engaged in
living alongside your values, are inclined toward
compassion for others, and possess an understanding of
how your existence contributes value to the world.
4. Play: a flexible state of mind in which you are presently
engaged in some freely chosen and potentially purposeless
activity that you find interesting, enjoyable, and satisfying.
5. Mastery: a state of mind where you feel a sense of personal
control and confidence and are engaged in learning to get
better and better at something that matters.
By developing these five natural antidepressant fundamentals,
which I will show you how to do step by step, you can strengthen
your brain’s ability to act as its own antidepressant that can be as
powerful as—or even more powerful than—the antidepressant
medications..
Because you are alive, anything is possible.
—THICH NHAT HANH, VIETNAMESE
ZEN BUDDHIST MONK AND TEACHER
A Note About Antidepressant Medications
I recognize the value of antidepressant medications, and I
believe they can play an important role in the treatment of
clinical depression. I’ve seen pharmaceuticals be lifesavers for
some depressed patients, giving them the help they need to
engage in necessary psychological treatment.
However, I also believe these drugs are heavily overpre-
scribed and overused. For many patients, antidepressants cause
more harm than good. They can create a cascade of mental
health problems that go far beyond the depression they were
prescribed to treat. Too many people get caught in the trap of
jumping from one drug to the next or taking multiple
prescriptions in order to offset serious side effects caused by
individual drugs.
As I see it, the problem with current pharmaceutical
treatments is that they haven’t caught up with recent
discoveries in neuroscience.
A growing number of health care professionals are starting to
integrate current science in the decision-making process when
treating depression. They are beginning to look at the illness in
a science-based, whole-person approach. But still, too many
patients, health care providers, researchers, medical
organizations, and government-funded agencies rely on
outdated information to make decisions and recommendations
about the use of antidepressant medications. They operate
from the decades-old assumption that mental health can be
restored to people with depression only by using drugs to
“balance” the chemicals in their brains. That assumption is no
longer accurate.
In recent years, research that you’ll soon learn about has
revealed so much about natural antidepressants, mindfulness,
cognitive-behavioral therapy, and other nondrug approaches to
treating depression and promoting long-term healing.
Antidepressant medications are still a useful tool for treating
depression, but they’re not the only tool, and in many cases,
they’re not the most effective tool. It’s important to be informed
about medication and make the decision to integrate them or
taper off of them as part of your treatment in conjunction with
your doctor.
Whether you are on antidepressants and they’re working for
you, you’re on them and want to get off of them, or you are not
on antidepressants at all, the work that you do through this book
is going to support your ability to get better at overcoming the
depressive cycles.
THE STATS ON ANTIDEPRESSANT MEDICATIONS
• About 11 percent of Americans over the age of twelve take
antidepressant medication.
• More than 60 percent of Americans taking antidepressant medication have taken it for two years or longer; 14 percent have taken it for ten years or more.
• Antidepressants are the third most common prescription
drug used by Americans of all ages.
• In the past twenty-five years, the rate of antidepressant
use in the United States has increased nearly 400 percent.
Source: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
A Mindfulness Approach
Mindfulness is the foundation on which everything in Uncovering
Happiness is built. Put quite simply, mindfulness is awareness. It is
the action of intentionally using your five senses to bring complete
attention to your experience of the present moment, while letting
go of judgments and biases. Although it is rooted in Buddhism,
the practice of mindfulness has undergone extensive scientific
study in the West and has been shown to be a powerful, effective
way of eliciting psychological wellness. It has been used with great
success to help people with depression, anxiety, stress-related
disorders, chronic pain, addictive behavior, and even chronic
stress. Mindfulness is one of the ways that we can take advantage
of the brain’s plasticity (explained on the next page) in order to
strengthen our emotional resilience.
In recent years, psychology researchers have found the prac-
tice of mindfulness to be particularly helpful in reducing the risk
of relapse in people who have experienced depression. Many
studies have found it to be a significant alternative to or support
for medication.
Mindfulness works by interrupting the conditioned cycle of
thoughts, emotions, sensations, and behavior that mire people in
a downward spiral of depression. Using mindfulness allows us to
transform our harsh inner critics to voices of support by
increasing the capacity for self-compassion that nurtures self-
worth and resiliency.
A Self-Compassion Approach
While mindfulness is the foundation for Uncovering Happiness,
mindfulness on its own is often not enough. The other foundation
on which this program rests is self-compassion: the recognition of
our own suffering with an inclination to help ourselves. Once we
become aware that we’re struggling, self-compassion allows us to
activate the brain’s self-soothing system. This inspires a sense of
safety and courage to engage in the behavioral changes necessary
to move toward healing.
As humans, we’re wired with an automatic negativity bias, pay-
ing more attention to what’s negative than positive. This wiring is
for survival: if danger is lurking, we want to have a quick-response
system to keep us safe. The problem is that this same negativity
bias turns inward, and we can be too hard on ourselves. With
depression, these voices really dig in, striking where we’re most
vulnerable and evoking feelings of shame, inadequacy, and un-
worthiness. The cultural stigma of depression as a weakness only
feeds these feelings. Part of self-compassion is to recognize that
we’re not alone with this, it’s not something to be ashamed of, and
that emotional struggles are a part of the human condition.
Science is now revealing that self-compassion is a key
transformative and protective mindset for decreasing anxious and
depressive symptoms. The alchemy of mindfulness and self-
compassion transforms vulnerability so that instead of it being
something we fear will spiral us down, it becomes an upward
spiral of self-worth and resiliency.
It may seem difficult to do, but it’s a skill that anyone can learn.
Think of this book as your compassionate guide. Even after
you’ve read it from cover to cover, it will remain with you, ready
to help guide you through the ups and downs that are part of this
unfolding life.
Based in Science
The techniques, tools, and strategies in this book are grounded in
a wealth of exciting new scientific knowledge. For decades,
psychological treatment was based on observations about people’s
behaviors, choices, thoughts, and explanations. But the
development of technological resources such as functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has opened windows into
the human mind, al- lowing neurological researchers to
understand brain function in amazing new ways that have never
been possible before.
Using advanced scientific technology, researchers have
discovered, for example, that by using certain cognitive and
mind-body techniques, we actually have the ability to change our
brains. This is called neuroplasticity. Until about the 1970s,
scientists believed that once the brain finished undergoing the
growth and development of childhood, its structure, pathways,
and connections were pretty much set in stone. But researchers
began to challenge that assumption, and they designed studies to
test it. (I’ll tell you about some of the fascinating ones later in the
book.) Soon the idea of the “static brain” was replaced by the
belief in the plasticity of the brain—science was showing that the
brain can actually be rewired through the actions of neural
processes, behaviors, and the environment. This was amazing
news for people with depression, anxiety, and other emotional
health problems, because it demonstrated the potential for the
parts of the brain associated with emotions to be made more
resilient. We now know, for example, that we can actually grow
new nerve connections and activate areas of the brain
associated with awareness, learning, memory, and empathy. We
can strengthen the parts of the brain associated with resiliency
just as we can strengthen the muscles in our bodies. What’s
more, we can actually deactivate areas of the brain that rev up
when we experience the automatic negative thoughts that fuel
depression.
What it all comes down to is this: we can build up the sections
of the brain that protect us from depression, and slow down the
sections that foster depression. Doing this allows the brain’s own
natural antidepressants to emerge, grow stronger, and contributes
powerfully to the resiliency that we need to enjoy good times,
survive difficult times, and open us up to lives that truly feel worth
living.
Unlearning Helplessness
This book also addresses another crucial area to overcoming
depression: unlearning the learned helplessness that influences
the behavior of so many people with depression.
Learned helplessness is a mental state in which we are unable
or unwilling to solve a problem even when there is a viable
solution within reach. It occurs when our brains come to the
conclusion that we don’t have control over problematic
situations. Being depressed induces a sense of learned
helplessness that can surface again in the future, when
depression reoccurs. Learned helplessness teaches us to stop
trying to help ourselves even when we are actually capable of it,
and it prevents us from learning new strategies to prevent
relapse even when those strategies exist. It is another lie that
depression forces us to believe.
Yet just as helplessness can be learned, it can be unlearned. We
can begin replacing learned helplessness with learned helpfulness.
Science shows that we can actually grow new neural connections
in areas of the brain that process emotional pain, empowering us
to recognize our own helplessness and replace it with more
constructive thinking and self-helpful behavior.
Once we identify and understand the helplessness habits
we fall into during periods of depression, we can challenge and
change them, replacing them with new behaviors of helpfulness
that allow us to solve problems and pull ourselves away from
depression. By unlearning learned helplessness, we can unearth
the inner strength we need to make choices that lead us out of the
self-perpetuating loop of helplessness and depression.
The Format of Uncovering Happiness
The following pages integrate the findings of hundreds of
academic studies and dozens of interviews with mindfulness
teachers, psychologists, neuroscientists, and researchers. (See the
notes section of the book for citations.) It also includes stories
from some of the people I’ve worked with who have suffered the
burden of depression and who have used the techniques in this
book to find their own personal pathways to healing. All of
these stories are shared with permission, and pseudonyms have
been used to protect each person’s privacy.
Uncovering Happiness has three parts.
In part 1, I’ll lay out the groundwork for cultivating what I call
an antidepressant brain. We’ll cover the following topics and more:
• what depression is, and why it happens;
• what the depression loop is, how it works, and how we
can interrupt it;
• why having depression once or twice or even repeatedly
for years does not mean you are destined to face a future
of chronic depression;
• how subconscious conditioning feeds depression;
• why depression is not your fault;
• how to break the habits that contribute to and sustain
depression;
• how a transformative method is changing the way we
think about human potential; and
• how to stop one very specific force from allowing us to
fall into depression again and again.
In part 2, we’ll look at the five essential natural antidepressants:
mindfulness, self-compassion, purpose, play, and mastery. I’ll ex-
plain what these are, how they can protect you from depression,
how they inspire real happiness, and how to develop them in your
life.
Part 3, “The Natural Antidepressant Tool Kit,” is a fantastic
resource that will give you an array of tools, techniques, and
practices to support you throughout your journey. Here you’ll
find guidance on creating your own antidepressant “cheat sheets,”
forming your own “get-well team,” building healthy habits that
you can stick to for the rest of your life, and becoming part of a
supportive mindfulness community.
Where I’m Coming From
Mindfulness changed my life; in fact, it may have even saved it.
Looking back, I can trace my ups and downs with depression to
as early as childhood. In youth, depression can often show up
as anger, and my family would describe me during those years
as defiant, willful, and angry. Imagine a chubby, freckle-faced
kid with a frown and his arms crossed over his chest—that was
me. My parents divorced when I was six years old, and I grew up
searching for ways to ease the feelings of loneliness and emotional
pain. During high school, I started experimenting with alcohol
and marijuana as an escape, and in college I discovered
psychedelics and amphetamines. The drugs helped me get away
from the internal experience of loneliness and grief that had
resided within me since childhood.
While living in San Francisco during my twenties, I built a
successful career in sales. Yet at night, I lived fast and partied
recklessly, abusing drugs and alcohol with a like-minded group
of drifting souls. Eventually my despair and shame grew so deep
that I isolated myself from my family and friends and lost myself
in my addictive behaviors.
Occasionally, in some of the seedier bars I frequented, I would
come across a mess of a man who was so strung out that he re-
pulsed me. I remember saying to my friends, “God help me if I
ever turn out like him.” I thought, since I was managing to
succeed at work, I was in control of my self-abusive behavior. But
one night, after many hours of partying, I saw the truth of who I
had become. When I found myself slumped beside that man
and his equally dazed companion in the back of a broken-
down limousine, I saw my own reflection in his wasted face and
realized I was throwing away my life. I jumped out of the
limousine, determined to transform myself.
It wasn’t easy, and I admit that I hit a few bumps as I set out to
start my life over. My family urged me to spend a month away at a
retreat center. During that time, I questioned everything I did and
all that I believed. Answers began to come to me as I started to
practice mindfulness: I wanted to stop abusing my body. I wanted
to find the purpose and meaning of my life. I wanted to be happy.
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I wanted to heal myself, and eventually, I realized, I wanted to
help heal others who faced some of the same challenges that had
nearly broken me.
I went back to school and entered into a playful adventure
with mindfulness. I focused on living a more purposeful life,
surrounding myself with supportive people and replacing
destructive behaviors with healthy choices that fulfilled me. I
started to create a life of meaning and purpose that allowed me to
feel whole. I was starting to uncover happiness.
After finishing my training as a clinical psychologist, I began
running mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and
mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) programs
focusing on helping people relate to stress better and not
relapse into depression. During the years that followed, I saw
how effectively mindfulness-based therapies helped people
reduce stress and heal emotionally. I began training therapists,
physicians, educators, and business people in the combination
of mindfulness and mental health. I went on to coauthor A
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook and authored The
Now Effect and Mindful- ness Meditations for the Anxious
Traveler. I designed programs to reach a variety of different
people, including Mindfulness at Work® for corporations,
Mindful Compassion Cognitive Therapy (MCCT) for
depressive relapse, and co designed the CALM (Connecting
Adolescents to Learning Mindfulness) program with my wife,
Dr. Stefanie Goldstein. As I continued with my own practice
and learned from the practice of my clients and students, I
discovered powerful essential antidepressant elements that had
never before been explicitly integrated into the current
mindfulness-based therapies for people with depression.
Throughout this journey, I’ve gone through profound shifts
in how I relate to myself and the world. I’ve learned that I don’t
have to be enslaved by the story of the past, and I certainly don’t
need to believe everything I think. I have a deep sense that I am
worthy of love, and that often comes through my own courage
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in being vulnerable with myself and others. I don’t get caught
as often in the trap of “What will people think?” but side more
with the belief that “I am doing the best I can at the moment,
and I am enough.” I have also noticed that life has its ups and
downs, and I can’t control the conditions that happen to me in
any given moment, but I can choose, with awareness, how to
respond to them.
I now know that uncovering happiness is not about simply
being drunk on life but is found in a profound and enduring
experience of learning how to lean into loving ourselves and
others in good times and in bad. It’s a happiness based on a
sense of common humanity, connectedness, and purpose. I
notice feeling more loving and peaceful with myself and
others—not all the time, but much more than before. While I
still get hooked at times by self-judgments and negative
thoughts, I have learned to be grateful for the good moments
and a bit more graceful during the difficult ones, knowing that all
things in life come and go.
The guidance in this book is not a miraculous panacea—it
can’t cure depression overnight, and each step does take effort to
implement into your life. I can’t promise you that reading
Uncovering Happiness will make all of your depressive symptoms
disappear instantly. But I can promise that the guidelines within
these pages will give you the tools you need to begin to break the
cycle of depression and release yourself from its grip.
Whatever your experience with depression has been—whether
you just have the blues, you have chronic low-grade unhappiness,
or you’ve experienced one or more major depressive episodes—
you have the power to change the way you feel. By understanding
how depression works and making the choice to nurture your
natural antidepressants, you can become stronger and more
resilient
Trust yourself; you can cultivate an antidepressant brain and uncover
happiness.
If you’re not completely convinced that you can take steps to
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help yourself feel better, try putting aside that judgment. That’s
your depression talking. Try your best to ignore those doubts for
now and take a leap of faith. Soon the experience of truth will
begin to crowd out the lies of depression.
Ready? Let’s get started.
Understand the
Depression Loop
Clint, a middle-aged executive, had experienced bouts of anx-
iety and depression off and on since childhood. Raised by an
overly critical father, Clint grew up believing that having negative
emotions was a sign of weakness, so he buried them deep inside.
When Clint was a child, his father would call him a sissy and
embarrass him in public when he cried. Later in life, when Clint
felt sadness or other difficult emotions, he would close himself
down and become numb, avoiding his partner, and burying him-
self in work to try to hide from his feelings. Clint didn’t realize it
at the time, but he was caught in a depression loop: complicated
feelings (such as sadness) would trigger reactionary thoughts
(negative self-talk) and sensations (emotional numbness) that
would in turn cue certain behaviors (withdrawal from loved ones
and escape to his computer and his work). Anxiety and hopeless-
ness left Clint feeling pessimistic that he’d ever emerge from his
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depression, creating a negative feedback loop that made him feel
trapped.
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ELISHA GOL DSTEI N, PhD
Working together, Clint and I focused on understanding the
cyclical nature of his responses to his feelings. Clint began to see
and recognize his own personal depression cues. He began to
learn to step outside of his habitual mindsets when uncomfortable
feelings emerged in order to take a closer look at those feelings
and the reactions they elicited. He identified triggers, thought
patterns, and behaviors that were associated with his depressive
experiences.
Clint had a breakthrough experience one morning. After hear-
ing some bad family news, he paid attention to his reactions and
noticed himself becoming numb and withdrawn. He felt an urge
to head to his computer to work, as he had so often before. He saw
himself trying to flee from his sadness instead of allowing himself
to feel it. This time, though, things were different. Because he had
learned how to recognize the activation of his familiar depressive
loop, he was more aware and able to interrupt it. He was able to
make the choice to step out of the cycle and let himself feel sad
rather than hiding from the feeling. As he gave himself
permission to experience an uncomfortable emotion, the
tension in his body dissipated, and within a half hour, the
sadness passed. Clint felt elevated by a sense of freedom he
hadn’t experienced in quite some time. By recognizing his own
personal depressive stimulus, Clint was able to change his
response and avoid a negative spiral that would lead him down
the path of negative feelings, thoughts, sensations, and behaviors.
Learning to identify the cyclical nature of the depression loop
and to recognize your own depression cues, as Clint did, is
crucial for uncovering happiness. We’re going to focus on that in
this chapter, because knowing what triggers your own depression
loop is a powerful first step toward being able to overcome
depression. Having awareness gives you space to make
choices: instead of responding automatically and without
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thought, you can make
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UNC O VERI NG HAPPINESS
Kind,informed,mindful
decisions that can protect
you from depression and
open you up to possibilities
you didn’t see before.
The Truth About
Depression
Having a clear understanding
of depression, what depres-
sion is or isn’t, helps sharpen
your ability to recognize it
in your own life, acknowl-
edge how it affects you, de-
velop proactive responses to
your own personal depressive
cues, and lay the groundwork
for cultivating a brain with
natural antidepressants.
Let’s begin with what
depression is.
First and foremost, it is
an illness—and like many
illnesses, the experience of
depression can vary from per-
son to person. Some people
have major depression,
striking the brain just as an
acute case of pneumonia
strikes the lungs. People
with this
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FINDING THE
FREEDOM IN THE
“SPACE”
As you work through the
steps in this book, I hope
you’ll keep in mind a
wonderful quote from
Viktor E. Frankl, an
Austrian neu- rologist,
psychotherapist, Holo-
caust survivor, and author
of the book Man’s Search
for Meaning: “Between
stimulus and response
there is a space, in that
space lies our power to
choose our re- sponse, in
our response lies our
growth and our freedom.”
The space between
stimulus and response is the
space in which automatic,
unconscious thinking often
takes over. When a stim-
ulus appears, we may
initially think we have no
choice in how we respond
to it. Someone cuts us off
in traffic, and we respond
with anger. A critical remark
from an employer fills us
with shame. But even
though it may feel as if
those responses are
inevitable, they are not.
There is a space between
stimulus and response, and
within that space we have
the freedom to choose. That
philoso- phy is at the very
core of Uncover- ing
Happiness. Start to
recognize the space
between stimulus and
response in your everyday
life. Once you become
aware of that space, we can
use it to make rea- soned,
conscious choices.
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depression experience extreme symptoms that can severely
curtail their normal everyday functioning for varying amounts of
time. Others have less serious symptoms that are more akin to the
allergies that may last for weeks, months, or years, interfering with
their happiness but not necessarily preventing them from living a
functional life.
Because depression is not talked about openly, many people
are ignorant about it. People sometimes think that depression
is made up, a kind of chosen laziness, lack of self-discipline, or
character flaw. But they’re wrong. Thanks to advances in brain
imaging, we know that the brains of people who have depression
actually look different on scans than the brains of those who don’t,
just as the lungs of people with pneumonia look different on scans
than those of people with healthy lungs.
Depression causes a range of symptoms that interfere with
daily life, happiness, and the ability to sleep, work, eat, make
decisions, socialize, and enjoy pleasurable activities. It is so
prevalent that nearly 7 percent of adults in the United States will
face an episode of major depression this year. Millions more will
experience a sense of chronic unhappiness.
There is no one cause for depression. It can be the result of
someone’s genetics, difficult experiences early in life, or both.
Episodes of depression can be triggered by outside events and
situations such as a physical or emotional trauma, the loss of a
loved one, an accident, a natural disaster, a change of seasons,
hormonal changes, pregnancy or childbirth, stress, relationship
problems, unemployment, and a host of other causes. Or they
can have no visible trigger at all.
Like most other illnesses, depression can be treated success-
fully in a variety of ways, including medication and several kinds
of therapy. Even the most severe cases of depression can improve
with and at times be prevented by treatment.
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Now let’s consider what depression is not.
The biggest, most important thing that depression is not is
your fault. Depression occurs as a result of a combination of
genetic, biological, environmental, and psychological factors.
People don’t choose to have depression, and it’s not something
they can just snap out of when someone tells them to cheer up.
Depression is not who you are—it involves a conditioned habit
that your brain has learned, and that your brain can unlearn. A
habit is a routine of some process that we learn and that after
being repeated tends to occur subconsciously. Even in someone
who is genetically predisposed to depression, the habit is how
the brain reacts to the relapse signs when they arise that fuels the
downward spiral. After even a single depressive event, all your
brain needs is a cue and a conditioned combination of thoughts,
emotions, and sensations arise and go to work beneath your
conscious awareness. The brain perceives this as a threat and
then begins to engage in common behaviors that can be used to
avoid this discomfort. Maybe you tend to overeat, isolate from
friends, become a couch potato, or procrastinate. Like any
habit, the result of these behaviors is predictable, bringing up
self-loathing, hopelessness, anger, or sadness, and keeps you stuck
deeper in the conditioned reaction that I call the “depressive
loop.” But one of the biggest errors we make is identifying with
this depressive loop as if this is who we are.
You are not your depression.
As this depressive habit loop unfolds in your life, the brain
eventually creates a story with you as the main character as a
depressive person. If you’ve struggled with this throughout life,
family and friends have likely reinforced this identity, calling you
a “depressed person.” When something is part of who you are, it
becomes fixed, unchanging, and a draw for feeling deficient or
defective. But when we truly investigate depression, even chronic
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ELISHA GOL DSTEI N, PhD
unhappiness, it’s just a passing, fluctuating pattern of thoughts,
emotions, and sensations that comes and goes like all other
things. It’s not fixed at all, and clinging to this identity can be a
source of deep shame and sorrow that repeatedly cues chronic
unhappiness or more acute episodes. But it doesn’t have to stay
this way. For the past fifteen years, scientists have discovered the
dynamic nature of our brains and how we can create new neural
connections throughout the life span.
At the moment it may be difficult, but for now, see if you can
begin holding any story that “I am a depressed person” lightly.
As you do, you may come to understand that the all-too-familiar
feeling that “something is wrong with me” is not something to
be ashamed of, any more than having pneumonia or allergies is
something to be ashamed of. You don’t choose depression—it
chooses you.
Depression occurs in all types of people. Although women are
70 percent more likely than men to become depressed at some
point in their lives, millions of men develop it as well. But many
try to keep it a secret because men are taught from a young age
that you need to be “strong” and that depression is a source of
shame, implying “weakness.” From an evolutionary perspective,
if you’re weak, the clan doesn’t value you, you’re not a desirable
mate, and you don’t belong. If you’re cast out of the clan, your life
is at risk. The brain of the modern-day man doesn’t see it much
differently. Hiding depression only keeps us identified with it and
doesn’t let it do what it’s meant to do: come and go. An increasing
number of men understand this better and are speaking up about
it and seeking support. On the other hand, many kids can’t hide
it, as depression comes out as anger, irritability, and willfulness.
Depression is not always obvious. The shame associated with
depression leads people to often hide their illness from friends,
family, and even their doctors. So if you’re walking around
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thinking
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that you’re the only one you know who’s struggling with this
illness, chances are pretty good that you’re wrong. You may very
well have friends, neighbors, coworkers, and family members
who are depressed. They hide it from you just as you may hide
yours from them.
SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS OF DEPRESSION
• Persistent sad, anxious, or “empty” feelings
• Feelings of hopelessness or pessimism
• Feelings of guilt, worthlessness, or helplessness
• Irritability, restlessness
• Loss of interest in activities or hobbies once pleasurable,
including sex
• Fatigue and decreased energy
• Difficulty concentrating, remembering details, and
making decisions
• Insomnia, early-morning wakefulness, or excessive
sleeping
• Overeating or appetite loss
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• Thoughts of suicide, suicide attempts
• Aches or pains, headaches, cramps, or digestive problems
that do not ease with treatment
Source: US National Institute of Mental Health
Depression as a Side Effect
Depression can sometimes be caused by medical conditions such
as thyroid disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and brain
disorders. It can also be brought on by medications: dozens of
drug classes list depression as a possible side effect, including (but
not limited to) calcium channel blockers, beta-blockers,
benzodiazepines, statins, painkillers, cancer treatments,
therapeutic hormones, and birth control.
People don’t choose to have depression, and it’s not
something they can just snap out of when someone tells
them to cheer up.
The Depression Loop
I’ve found during my work with depression that it’s helpful to
envision it as a kind of circular process: an automatic loop rather
than a linear set of events. Clients find it useful to think of it as
a cycle, a spiral, or even a traffic circle. However you picture it,
understanding the circular nature of events that lead to or keep
Goldstein_Happiness_2P_KH.indd 11 9/18/14 2:08 PM
depression alive is an important step toward recognizing how it
can pull you into its sphere of influence.
For now, let’s use the image of a traffic circle to explain how the
depression loop works. If you live someplace where there are lots
of traffic circles or if you have ever driven on one, you know how
confusing and maddening they can be.
You’re driving on a straight road, minding your own business,
maybe humming along with a song on the radio, and suddenly
a traffic circle looms ahead. It just kind of appears on the street
ahead of you. Your mind instantly starts anticipating entering the
circle, how the cars may stream in, and how you’re going to exit.
A feeling of fear or anxiety arises; your hands start to sweat and
grip the steering wheel. As you enter, you search for a sign for a
way out, and halfway through the circle you realize that you have
to switch lanes to jockey for position so you’re ready for your exit.
Meanwhile, you drive by other entrance points that each admit
streams of new cars into the circle. You see your exit, but you
realize that you either have to speed up or slow down. If you miss
your exit—which is so easy to do—you have no choice but to loop
around again hoping that next time you’ll make your way out.
Falling into the depression loop is a lot like entering a traffic
circle. You’re living your life, feeling fine, minding your own busi-
ness, and all of a sudden you find depression looming. Maybe it’s
just a feeling you wake up with, a moment when you suddenly
fall prey to a shaming inner critic that says something like “there’s
something wrong with me/you,” or a response to hearing some
negative news. Once you’re in it, you try valiantly to get out. But
it’s so easy to get stuck.
Just as various roads lead you into a traffic circle, the
depression loop has four entrance points: thoughts, feelings,
sensations, and behaviors. Any one of these can lead you into the
depression loop. Once you’re caught inside the loop, your mind
goes around
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Goldstein_Happiness_2P_KH.indd 13 9/18/14 2:08 PM
and around struggling to get out. Streams of thoughts enter the
loop as your brain struggles to figure out “What’s wrong with
me?” As one of my students says, “The bloodhound is sniffing
around for the villain (and much analysis is required).” The brain
anxiously defaults to reaching back into the past, referencing and
rehashing negative events to try to figure it out. Simultaneously,
the brain jumps into the future, planning, rehearsing, and antici-
pating some upcoming hopeless catastrophe. As all this happens,
the brain pours stress into an already stressful situation.
You may see an exit, but as you try to leave the loop, you find
yourself blocked by more depressive thoughts, feelings,
sensations, and behaviors. Before you know it, the traffic gets
even heavier with the addition of streams of fear and anxiety
when you begin to perceive that you’re becoming trapped in
the self- perpetuating depression loop. You’re desperate for
escape, but, sideswiped by fear and negativity, you become so
overwhelmed that you just keep going around and around and
around. Soon a sense of learned helplessness sets in: you can no
longer even see the exit, so you stop trying to break free and
begin to believe you may never escape.
This was a common occurrence for one of my patients,
thirty-year-old Sandy, who had experienced bouts of depression
her whole life. Typically she would feel fine for a while, but then
at times, seemingly out of nowhere, she would become depressed.
Sandy would lose interest in activities she usually enjoyed and
have trouble finding the motivation she needed for everyday
tasks. Feelings such as unworthiness and guilt would begin to
flood her mind, and in response, she tended to isolate herself
from her family and friends and make choices that fueled her
depression rather than pull her out of it.
Sandy experienced depression as a persistently reinforcing
loop that dragged her down. Negative thoughts would trigger
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troubling feelings (or vice versa) that in short time would turn
into an ever-present depressed mood state. This would make it
tough for Sandy to get out of the bed in the morning. Doing the
activities she usually enjoyed felt nearly impossible, and instead
of partaking in life, Sandy would often end up sitting in her
apartment feeling terrible about herself, eating too much,
drinking too much, and sinking deeper and deeper into a morass
of gloom.
Your Changing Brain
Sandy didn’t know this, but each time she experienced a bout of
depression and got lost in the depression loop, her brain actu-
ally changed. When we practice anything in life over and over
again, it starts to become automatic; in psychology, we call that
a conditioned habitual reaction, and in neuroscience, it’s called
experience-dependent neuroplasticity. Right now eighty billion to
one hundred billion nerve cells, or neurons, are interacting
with what some have said are one trillion connections, called
synapses, in an unimaginably fast and dynamic network.
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When we do something over and over—whether it’s
something we’re trying to learn, such as improving our tennis
swing; or something we’d rather not learn, like an anxiety
response to dogs after being bitten by one—neurons in our
brains fire together. As we repeat these actions, they eventually
wire together, making the process an unconscious habit. This is
called top-down processing. It is the brain’s process of drawing
from our implicit memories to make sense of the present
moment, and it’s how the neuroscience of decision making
works.
Do you have to think about how to pick up the spoon to eat
your morning breakfast cereal, or how to step on the accelerator
or brake when driving your car? No, and you can thank top-down
processing for that: your brain directs you to do these things
automatically. Top-down processing comes in handy when the
habit is something positive or neutral. But the brain also has the
ability to make decisions beneath our conscious awareness that
keep us stuck in the depression loop.
A good way to understand how top-down processing plays
a part in depression is to think about its connection to trauma.
A trauma reaction is so shocking to the nervous system that it
instantly wires the brain to be highly sensitive to any signs of it
coming again. The trauma of being bitten by a dog, for example, is
enough to create a neural bridge between all of the thoughts,
emotions, sensations, and behavior associated with the dog bite.
After experiencing the trauma of being attacked by a loose
German shepherd, simply walking by a leashed Chihuahua
can cue the snap judgment of insecurity and the emotion of fear
even though the Chihuahua presents no actual danger. This
causes the stress hormone cortisol to flood the brain, cutting off
access to the part of the brain that recognizes the context of the
situation: that the Chihuahua is harmless and really not a
threat. Instead, the cortisol launches you into a fight, flee, or
freeze response governed
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by fear and irrationality rather than by reason and judgment. You
fear the Chihuahua because of your own automatic emotional and
physical responses, not because any real danger exists.
This played out in a less dramatic but equally troublesome way
for my client Sandy. One day when she came in to see me looking
particularly distressed, she told me that she received an email that
a client of hers was angry with her work. In exploring it together,
we realized that this kind of cue triggered worries about losing
that client, increasing her anxiety, and making her heart race
and her breathing to become shallow. Her mind spiraled with
negative hopeless thoughts about the future of her business, and
she began to avoid doing her work. Sandy knew she was getting
depressed, and this spiraled more fear. Her response prevented
her from dealing with the client’s email in a logical, objective way.
Sandy was ready to start breaking this cycle when she finally
recognized her depressive loop for what it really was: a deeply
conditioned habit (or trauma reaction). In fact, just
understanding the concept of the depression loop was enough
for Sandy to start effecting a change in her relationship to
depression. She was able to see it in action in her daily life and
name it. The moment she saw it occurring, she was able to stand
apart from it in a space of awareness that was separate from the
loop itself and to gain per- spective—as did Clint, the client I
described in the beginning of this chapter. She no longer felt
that she was the loop—rather, she was the aware person viewing
the loop. In this space, she found a sense of freedom and a
“choice point,” a moment in time when she was aware enough to
choose a healthier response.
The first step in uncovering happiness and experiencing
freedom from the depression loop is learning how to objectively
see this loop in action instead of getting lost in it. The moment
we notice the depression loop in action is a moment we’ve
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stepped outside of it, into a space of perspective and choice. The
beauty is
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that science is now showing us that through intentional repetition
and action, we can change our brains for the better. This is what
psychiatrist and researcher Jeffrey Schwartz, of the University
of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine, has coined self-
directed neuroplasticity. It may seem impossible, but it’s not. You’ll
soon see that you can turn the volume down on the fear that keeps
it going and catch the signs that cue the habit in the first place.
The moment you notice the depression loop in action
is the moment you’re able to step outside of it, into a
space of perspective and choice.
Learning to Be Helpless
As I mentioned in the introduction, something called learned
helplessness plays a significant role in the depression loop. Before
we go any further, I want to tell you more about what learned
helplessness is and the hold it very likely has on you.
Once again, learned helplessness is a mental state when our
minds decide that we don’t have control over problematic
situations—even if we actually do have some control. Being
depressed induces a sense of learned helplessness that blinds
us to our choices and discourages us from trying to help
ourselves even when we have the capacity to make things better.
We first became aware of learned helplessness in the late 1960s,
when University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman
and his colleague Steve Maier designed a study to determine what
would happen when someone experienced pain repeatedly
without any way out. Would he learn to feel helpless and
hopeless?
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Seligman used thirty dogs in his now-famous study. He
randomly divided them into three groups: The dogs in group
one were put into harnesses for a short period of time and
then re- leased. The dogs in group two were put into harnesses
and then received mild electrical shocks that they could stop
by pressing on a panel with their snouts. The dogs in group
three were put in harnesses and shocked, but they had no
control over the shocks and could not stop them. (This kind of
research sounds cruel to us today, but fifty years ago, there were
different opinions about the treatment of laboratory animals.)
The dogs in group three learned that no matter what actions
they took, there was nothing they could do to stop from being
shocked.
Seligman wondered what effect a traumatic experience like
this would have on the dogs’ ability to learn to avoid future
suffering. To figure this out, he placed the dogs inside a kind of
“shuttle box” like the one you see on the next page, with electrical
grids for a floor and a short partition separating it into two
spaces. A light would come on shortly before the shock to alert
the dogs of the impending electrical current. After a little
while, the group two dogs learned that they could escape the
shock by jumping over the partition when the light came on.
But the group three dogs, who had learned to be helpless, just
laid there stoic, immobilized, not expending any energy to leave.
Their past experience of not being able to relieve their suffering
interfered with their ability to learn to relieve future suffering.
This was the first time researchers had shown that having
experienced helplessness in the past can interfere with the
ability to learn to escape future relapses.
Years later, researchers conducted similar studies with people
in which they used brain imaging technology to show what hap-
pens in the brain in situations like this. They found that the areas
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of the brain involved in helping a person make clear decisions and
feel motivated to follow through are distressed. Even though
people who are depressed would love nothing more than to
help themselves feel better, their brains become habituated to
thinking there is no way out.
When people see someone who is depressed, they don’t think
of learned helplessness; they often think it’s just an issue of
laziness, or a lack of motivation or willpower. Unenlightened
people believe that if someone with depression simply
exerted more effort, he or she would get better. But that’s not
how it is. This depression myth couldn’t be more wrong.
Like the dogs in the shuttle box, how can we learn to see “the
light,” or signs of relapse that come in order to learn to escape the
shock of depression? How can we resolve the longstanding
insecurities, unresolved traumas, or limiting core beliefs that
continue to keep us stuck?
Another interesting example of this is a study performed in
2011 by researchers at a small lab at the University of Colorado
Boulder. They split rats into three groups; mild shocks were ad
ministered to the tails of the rats in group two and group three,
while group one received no shocks. Group two had control over
escaping the shocks, whereas group three did not. When the re-
searchers studied the rats’ brains, they discovered that the rats in
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group two showed neuron growth in a part of the brain known
as the prefrontal cortex. (See next page.) Not only did those rats
escape the shocks, but their brains actually changed in reaction to
the experience.
This research contributed to a growing awareness of the fact
that the brain has the ability to break out of the trap of learned
helplessness. Like the animals in these studies, we can discover
how to escape the “shocks” of depression. As we do so, we
cultivate an antidepressant brain by bolstering activity in the
prefrontal cortex and slowing down the action in the amygdala.
Thanks to research on learned helplessness, we have better
insights and tools for breaking free from depression.
Brain Names
The brain is an amazingly complicated organ. You don’t have to
know all its ins and outs in order to uncover happiness, but it
helps to know the names of a few of the most important brain
structures related to depression:
• The amygdala (a-mig-da-la) is an almond-shaped structure in
the center of the brain that regulates memory and emotional
reactions. The amygdala processes and interprets information
gathered by the five senses and then tells the body how to react.
It has been coined the “fear circuit” for its pivotal role in our
fear reactions. It is often enlarged in a depressed brain,
suggesting that we may be more sensitive to fearful cues.
• The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is located in the front of the brain,
just behind the forehead. It’s the executive function center of the
brain, which is responsible for complex cognitive behavior such
as abstract thinking, analyzing thoughts, decision making,
rational perspective, and predicting outcomes of choices. It’s
the most evolved area of the brain. Your PFC lights up when
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you’re engaging in rational and deliberate decision making. It
manages your goals and the appropriate responses to achieve
them. A depressed brain will often show a general reduction in
PFC activity, but with heightened activity in the right prefrontal
cortex (known for more negative emotions) and less activity in
the left prefrontal cortex, which lights up with positive
emotions.
• The hippocampus, located right next to the amygdala, is
involved in learning, memory, and context. It draws on
memories to help us gain perspective and make conscious
choices. When the amygdala perceives danger, it cuts off
access to the hippo- campus. After all, there is no need to learn
in that moment, be- cause it’s time to fight, flee, or freeze, not to
stand still and draw inferences. This is what makes it difficult
to learn new ways of
coping in the midst of depression. The hippocampus is also
negatively impacted by repeated surges of cortisol, flooding
the brain in response to states of fear, which ambush us often
during the depression loop. This may be why in a depressed
brain, the hippocampus is often smaller in size.
Escaping the Loop
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Thoughts, emotions, sensations, and behavior. When it comes to
depression, these four elements feed off one another to create a
depressive feedback loop. While nobody knows what causes
depression, we do know that as this feedback loop repeats over
time, it becomes a conditioned habit, so that a single stimulus—
perhaps a negative thought, or feeling sad or physically tired—
can trigger the looping.
But here’s the upside to all this: just as the brain can be
conditioned into making the depression loop an ingrained habit,
it can also be conditioned away from it. You truly can rewire
your brain so that you don’t automatically fall into depression
whenever certain thoughts, emotions, sensations, or behaviors
occur. Having had depression in the past doesn’t mean that it’s
your fate to be in its grip the rest of your life. Understanding how
the depressive loop works is the first step to stepping outside of it,
gaining perspective, and dropping into a space of choice,
possibility, and freedom. When you’re driving down a road and
see a traffic circle looming, you don’t have to enter it. You can
veer onto a different road.
This isn’t easy, but it’s possible—and the more you practice it,
the better you’ll get at not only pulling yourself out of the loop but
also preventing yourself from entering it in the first place.
DEPRESSION CUES
Depression often starts with a cue, or trigger: an initial sense of unease
that can be brought on by a subconscious thought, memory, physical
feeling, emotion, or some external life event. It can be something as mild
as a friend’s disapproving expression or as severe as the loss of a job or
loved one. The cue is usually followed by:
• Thoughts: After the cue, the mind starts to think, and the stories
begin. The brain anxiously defaults to reaching back into the
past, referencing and rehashing negative events to try to give the
cue meaning and context. Simultaneously, the brain jumps into
future planning, rehearsing and anticipating all kinds of possible
catastrophes that could result from the cue. As it does this, more
stress pours into an already stressful situation.
• Emotions: The blues or anxiety sets in (or sets in deeper). As they
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do, new thoughts continue to flow as you say to yourself, “Why am
I getting depressed?” or “What did I do wrong?” or “This always
happens to me,” or “I’m hopeless.” This habitual looping can happen
instantaneously and last for days. The more you identify with the
narrative, the deeper the spiral of anxiety and depression goes.
• Sensations: As thoughts and emotions darken, physical sensations
and symptoms such as heaviness, fatigue, insomnia, and appetite
change set in.
• Behavior: Negative thoughts, difficult emotions, and uncomfortable
sensations skew your perception and influence your ability to make
healthy choices about behavior. This in turn can lead to even more
negative thoughts, difficult emotions, and uncomfortable sensations.
The death of a loved one, health problems, caring for an aging
parent, losing a job, the end of a relationship, or financial
difficulties. Some are more subtle, such as rejection by a friend, a
missed career opportunity, or discovering a family member’s
disloyalty. Depression cues can be linked to the calendar, and
can be set off by changes of sea- son, birthdays, holidays, and
anniversaries of losses or traumatic events. Paradoxically, even
seemingly positive, happy events—buying a new house, landing
a new job, getting married, celebrating a wedding anniversary,
going on vacation, becoming a parent, or achieving a long-
anticipated dream—can trigger depression cues. Our own
individual personalities, histories, life events, and brain
chemistry influence what our depression cues are and how they
are activated.
What Are Your Depression Cues?
The first step to stopping the cycle of depression is recognizing
your own depression cues and triggers. It’s good to think about
this when you’re feeling better—when you’re not trapped in the
depression loop—because it’s easier to be objective and have
perspective. If you keep a journal, you may be able to discern
your depression cues by rereading sections you wrote before or
during periods of depression.
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When you identify your depression cues, put them down on
paper and reflect on them. By doing so, you stamp them into your
short-term memory and increase your chances of recognizing
them in action when you’re at the cusp of becoming depressed.
Being aware of your own cues and triggers makes it more likely that
you’ll notice when you’re about to be pulled into a depression loop.
When you have a better idea of what your personal cues are,
you can become aware of them while they’re happening and use
them as a depression barometer.
Look back into your past and ask yourself what some of the
stimulus points for depression may be for you. Was there a
certain event that set it off? If not, can you think of specific
thoughts, thoughts, feelings, sensations, and behaviors that
have led you into a depression loop?
When I work with groups of clients or students, we do a brain
storming exercise that helps everyone identify his or her
depression cues. Standing in front of a group of people who
experience all levels of depression—from chronic low levels of
unhappiness. to occasional bouts of moodiness to repeated
episodes of major depression—I ask, “What are your depression
cues? How do you know that depression is coming on?” For a
moment, it’s quiet, and then some murmurs begin as one person
says something like, “I sleep too much.” Another says, “I notice
my thoughts become a lot more negative.” Another says, “I start
isolating from friends and family.” As they continue speaking, I
write everything down on the whiteboard. This brings an
awareness of the many kinds of cues that might ignite
depression. Equally importantly, it calls attention to the fact that
no one is alone in this, and that although our cues may be very
different, we all share this deeply human experience.
At first it may feel uncomfortable for you to identify and write
down your depression cues, because it forces you to confront
them face-to-face. But try to think of it this way: knowing them
will help you protect yourself from being sucked into the depression
loop in the future.
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Here is a list of common depression cues. Use it to help you
identify what can trigger your depression.
THOUGHTS EMOTIONS SENSATIONS BEHAVIORS
• “I am fat.” • Anxiety • Fatigue • Overeating
• “I am stupid.” • Sadness • Loss of energy • Eating a certain
food, such as
ice cream
• “I’ve messed up
again.”
• Irritability • Feeling heavy • Talking too
much
• “Nobody likes
me.”
• Impatience • Clenching • Sleeping
tle
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THOUGHTS EMOTIONS SENSATIONS BEHAVIORS
• “I am
unlovable.”
• Moodiness • Feeling wound
up or wired
• Drinking too
much
• “People are
avoiding me.”
• Fear • Restlessness • Going on
shopping sprees
• “I am a fraud.” • Emptiness • Blurry thinking • Overspending
• “I am never
going to feel
better again.”
• Hopelessness • Appetite
changes
• Risky sexual
behavior
• “I am
worthless.”
• Pessimism • Loss of memory • Avoiding friends
and family
• “I make
so many
mistakes.”
• Guilt • Body aches • Not bothering
with activities
you usually
enjoy
• “I am a bad
spouse, parent,
child, friend,
sibling, student,
employee,” and
so on.
• Shame • Headache • Not exercising
• “Things are
never going to
get better.”
• Grief • Gastro-
intestinal
symptoms such
as nausea or
diarrhea
• Watching too
much television
• “I don’t deserve
to live.”
• Anger • Dry mouth • Spending too
much time at
the computer
or playing video
games
• “Everything is
hopeless.”
• Despair • Shakiness • Nail biting
• Increased or
decreased
interest in sex
• Hair pulling
• Trouble seeing
or hearing
• Obsessive-
compulsive
behavior
• Excessive crying
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Worksheet: My Personal Depression Cues
Using the chart below, write down the thoughts, emotions,
sensations, and behavior cues that sometimes act as depression
triggers for you.
THOUGHTS EMOTIONS SENSATIONS BEHAVIORS
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Once you’ve drawn up your list of depression cues, make sure
you keep a copy where you can refer to it often: in your wallet, on
your refrigerator, in your online scheduler, and so on. Start paying
attention to yourself and your moods. You may want to check in
with yourself a few times a day—stop everything you’re doing, be
quiet for a moment, close your eyes, and ask yourself, “Where am
I starting this moment from?” Be mindful of what you’re feeling,
thinking, sensing, and doing. Go over your list of depression cues.
Do you notice any of them occurring now? (As you do this, you
may think of other potential depression cues. Keep writing them
down; the more you add to your list, the more likely you are to
start recognizing them.) If this seems like too much work, then
you are welcome to just do a check-in at the end of the day or even
the end of the week and see if you noticed any cues. See what feels
right for you.
When you give yourself a moment to pause and be aware, you
are training your brain to be present and opening up the
opportunity to see if any depression cues have been activated. If
every- thing is fine, it can turn into a moment of gratitude, and
you can go back to what you were doing. But if you recognize
that one of your depression cues has been triggered, you can take
action. You can start by acknowledging it and labeling it, and
this in and of itself can take the wind out of its sails.
For example, perhaps one of your depression cues is that you
start to engage in more frequent and intense thoughtless
overeating. Or it may even be more specific: thoughtless
overeating of chocolate-chip ice cream. When you take a
mindful pause and check in with yourself, you may identify
the fact that there has been an increased craving lately for
chocolate-chip ice cream. When you recognize this increase,
you can acknowledge that a potential depression cue has been
activated. When this happens, I want you to label it: tell yourself,
“My chocolate-chip-ice-cream
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Goldstein_Happiness_2P_KH.indd 31 9/18/14 2:08 PM
depression cue has been triggered. I could be on the verge of en-
tering a depression loop.”
Now, the fact that you recognize an increased craving for
chocolate-chip ice cream may not mean that you’re about to
experience a major bout of depression. The cue could, in fact,
be completely benign and mean nothing more than that you just
feel like having your favorite ice cream. But if you decide to
indulge in a scoop or two, it becomes a mindful choice instead of
a mindless habit.
You’ll learn over time that sometimes your cue is a false
alarm—as the joke about Sigmund Freud goes, sometimes a cigar
is just a cigar. But sometimes your chocolate-chip-ice-cream cue
really will be the sign that you’re starting to enter a depressive
loop. And if it is, you can take action to protect yourself.
In the next chapter, I’ll describe some of the specific actions
you can take in response to the triggering of a depression cue. For
now, let’s focus a little more on why understanding the depression
Goldstein_Happiness_2P_KH.indd 31 9/18/14 2:08 PM
loop and recognizing and labeling your depression cues is such an
important first step.
Once you’re aware that one of your depression cues has been
signaled, you can learn to objectively see this loop in action in-
stead of getting lost in it. It may seem impossible, but it’s not.
You’ll soon see that you can turn down the volume on the fear
that keeps the loop going and catch the signs that cue the habit in
the first place.
Name Them to Tame Them
Labeling a depression cue—literally saying its name out loud or
writing it down in a journal—is incredibly valuable. Giving it a
name can actually take away some of its power and can reduce
your chances of falling into a depression loop.
We know this because of some fascinating research by
psychologist Matthew Lieberman and his colleagues at the
UCLA Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory. They found
that the simple process of putting feelings into words—
referred to by psychologists as affect labeling—can help people
do a better job of managing those feelings.
Lieberman and his collaborators showed this in a kind of
creepy study—creepy if you don’t like spiders, that is. They found
that spiderphobic people who label and express their fears about a
nearby spider actually reduce their fears and are able to get closer
to a spider than are spiderphobes who see a spider but don’t label
and express their fears. Simply by acknowledging and labeling
their fear and putting them into words reduced the distress felt by
the spiderphobic volunteers.
Why does acknowledging and labeling feelings help diffuse
their power? Lieberman and his colleagues answered this
question by conducting studies on subjects while their brains
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were being scanned by functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI). The fMRI machine shows us where the blood is
flowing in the brain, which is a direct connection to the
brain’s activity. They found that labeling feelings actually
activates a specific region in the prefrontal cortex, which is less
active in depressed people, and reduces the activity in the
amygdala, which is more active in depressed people. “If the
amygdala is like an alarm clock alerting us to potential threats,
putting feelings into words is like hitting the snooze button,”
Lieberman wrote in an article about his work in the New York
Times. “The end result is being less distressed in the face of
something we fear . . . and less stressed over the long term,
which can contribute to better physical health.” When a
depression cue is triggered, we begin to feel fear and anxiety as
the amygdala heats up. But we want to cool it down by releasing
our fear.. Recognizing, acknowledging, and labeling a
depression cue—and actively understanding that a depression cue
can push us into a depression loop—can interrupt fear, cool down
the amygdala, and bring the brain back in balance.
As you practice and repeat this, you literally begin to change
your neurological wiring and cultivate an antidepressant brain by
creating more activity in the prefrontal cortex and less activity in
the amygdala.
Here’s an interesting psychological fact: when people see a
picture of an angry face, their amygdala becomes more active.
That’s because the amygdala’s job is to interpret the data we gather
through our senses. Seeing an angry face sets off an alarm of
sorts in the amygdala, which activates a series of physiological
responses in the body (known as the fight, flight, or freeze
response) that is designed to help us protect ourselves from
danger. How- ever, Lieberman and his colleagues discovered that
when subjects see a picture of an angry face and give it a
name—anger—brain activity shifts from the amygdala to the
prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for analyzing data and
making decisions based on that analysis. This is a very simple
explanation of Lieberman’s work, but it helps explain why it is
Goldstein_Happiness_2P_KH.indd 33 9/18/14 2:08 PM
so useful for people who are prone to depression to use words
to label their feelings. Doing so shifts the brain’s focus from an
emotional reaction driven by fear to a balanced reaction with
greater perspective.
As my good friend Dr. Dan Siegel, a psychiatrist at the UCLA
School of Medicine says, when it comes to feelings, if you can
name them, you can tame them.
We’ll talk more about this later. For now, the most important
takeaway is that you can begin to make real progress in breaking
the depression loop by taking the following steps:
• make a list of your common depression cues;
• take breaks to pause throughout the day, or at the end
of the day, to check in with your thoughts, feelings,
sensations, and behaviors;
• recognize and acknowledge whether any of your
depression cues have been triggered;
• label the cue and put into words the possibility that you
may be entering a depression loop; and
• recognize that as soon as you notice the loop occurring,
you are in a space of awareness—a choice point—where
you can begin to take action.
You can’t prevent yourself from ever falling into a depression
loop, especially if you’ve experienced depression in the past. But
you can devise a custom-tailored plan and get better and better at
putting it into action as soon as you notice your depression cues.
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Step 2: Reverse Bad Habits
Here’s a little secret that I’ve never told anyone: when I was in the
corporate world, managing sales teams in San Francisco, I would
sometimes play hooky, leaving the office and walking out to the
waterfront area known as the Embarcadero, that overlooked the
bay. Often it was clouded in a mist of fog. My eyes would drift off
in a vacant, empty stare as I wondered what I was doing with my
life and why I couldn’t seem to get it together. I felt so confused
and stuck, continuing to play out my bad habits that left me feeling
awful physically and mentally. The more I’d analyze it and try to
figure it out, the worse I felt. It wasn’t until much later on that I
realized a big reason why I kept repeating the bad habits: I was
looking in the wrong direction. The real bad habit that was fueling
this depressive loop was not something I normally associated with
habits. But it absolutely was a bad habit, and it was right in front
of me.
My worst bad habit was my thinking.
As I started to learn more about the nature of thought, I
discovered that it can become a bad habit when the mind isn’t
content. This occurs fairly often. The brain registers this
discontent and does what it is programmed to do: to try to
analyze it and figure out how to fix the pain so that it goes away.
However, in my experience and in the experiences of the
thousands of people I’ve worked with, I have found when the brain
tries to escape pain, it reinforces the feeling that “something is
wrong with me,” which inevitably adds stress to the pain and
kicks up even more emotional suffering.
This sparks the brain to come up with other ways to soothe
distress, which can lead to the unhealthy behaviors that we usually
associate with bad habits. The fact is, we are not our thoughts; not
even the ones that tell us we are.
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In step 1, you learned how
the depression loop works, and
you defined the personal cues
that draw you into it. In step 2,
you’ll delve further into this
exploration by seeking to
under- stand which habitual
thoughts keep the loop going,
how they can drive your brain
NUTs (see sidebar), and how
to find ways to begin freeing
yourself from your own mind.
You’ll also get a clearer view
of the behav- ioral bad habits
that keep the loop going,
how to recognize them, and
how to use a simple step-by-
step process to reverse them.
As you do this, you take fuel
away from the depressive
loop and begin cultivating
feelings of trust and self-
reliance, which fuels an
upward spiral of resiliency.
WHAT ARE NUTS?
The acronym NUTs is way of
bringing humor to those Neg-
ative Unconscious Thoughts
that arise constantly in the
brain, beneath our awareness,
and that feed the depression
loop. Examples of NUTs in-
clude deep-seated beliefs that
“I am unworthy,” “Something is
wrong with me,” and “Nothing
is ever going to change.” When
a challenging event occurs in
our lives, these NUTs become
a filter that clouds the way we
look at the world—and as a
result, they can actually make
us feel a little nuts! As we begin
bringing more attention to
what our NUTs are, we become
more conscious of what they
are. And, if you’ll excuse the
pun, understanding our NUTs
also strengthens our ability to
“crack them,” releasing their
hold on us.
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Habits of Thinking
Have you ever noticed that your head is full of voices? (I am
referring to the automatic thoughts that come to you
uninvited.) Have you ever wondered about the nature of those
voices? How they constantly rehash past events, judge and
compare you with others, and anticipate all the potentially
worst-case scenarios? Do you hear the voices right now? The
ones that might be say- ing, “Oh yes, I’ve heard this before” or
“What does he mean by ‘voices’?”
Yes, that’s the one.
These voices are constantly running in your mind, sometimes
during moments when you’re doing mindless tasks, like when
you’re in the shower:
“What do I need to do today? There’s the doctor at eleven
o’clock. I need to buy a birthday present for my niece; what
am I going to get her? I never know what to get people. I hope
she likes what I get her. I’m never good at getting people gifts.
I don’t even know why I bother. Ooh, I almost forgot I need to
deposit that check today.”
Other times when we’re not feeling well, our minds can feel
like they’re going nuts:
[While looking in the mirror]: “Wow, I look great today, don’t I
[sarcastic tone]? No wonder I can’t get a boyfriend. I hate how
I look. I hate where I’m at, nothing’s ever going to change.
Arghh, why am I so negative? Maybe this is why I have so much
trouble in relationships.”
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Sometimes there are multiple voices at once that argue with
one another:
“Another parking ticket? What’s wrong with me?” “Nothing is
wrong with you; just think of it as a donation to the city.”
[Sinking feeling] “I’m such a screwup.” “Stop being so negative!
Just think good thoughts [irritated tone]!” “Yeah, right, like
that’s going to make a difference! I tried that a thousand times.
Even my own advice sucks. Not only do I keep sinking myself
financially, but I can’t even see how screwed up I am.”
Five Major Mind Traps
Whether they are Negative Conscious Thoughts or NUTs, these
five seem to earn the highest marks for keeping us stuck in a
perpetual cycle of suffering:
Goldstein_Happiness_2P_KH.indd 38 9/18/14 2:08 PM
1. Doubt
When it comes to the depressive loop, one of the infamous
voices that keep us stuck is doubt. Even as you’re reading this
book, you might notice it:
“This might work for some people, but it’s probably not
going to work for me.” The motive of this voice is to keep us safe
from some sense of failure or disappointment, but ultimately
it keeps us away from new experiences that can be supportive.
2. Emptiness
Filled with longing to be someplace else or someone else,
our minds settle on the belief that the current moment is never
enough, we’re not enough, or we can’t do enough.
In the movie Big, Tom Hanks plays a young boy who
dreams that when he gets bigger, he will finally be happy. But
what he finds is that once he gets his wish, the voice inside still
isn’t satisfied, and he wants to be a kid again. Many of us hear
a similar voice: “I’ll be happy when I graduate from school and
don’t have homework anymore.” Or: “If only I could find a new
job, everything would get better.” Or: “Once I find someone to
marry, my life will be perfect.” The problem with this kind of
thinking is that when the awaited event does occur, happiness
may not come with it. We trap ourselves into believing that
what we have now is not enough; we’ll be happy only when
some future goal is met, and we get married, get divorced, get a
new haircut, get rich, lose weight, buy new clothes, retire—the
list is endless.
Meanwhile, this motive of trying to fix the current moment
leaves you in a perpetual cycle of dissatisfaction. If you look at
it closely, you’ll see that often there is pain underneath that dis-
satisfaction. By focusing on the idea that you’re not where you
“should be,” your brain is constantly reinforcing the message
that something is wrong with you, which then highlights a gap
Goldstein_Happiness_2P_KH.indd 39 9/18/14 2:08 PM
of deficiency that only grows wider as it tries harder. Even after
you get what your mind wanted (the new job, the new house,
the new partner, and so on), there is only brief relief because
although that wanting is appeased for a moment, the voices soon
want something else. The root problem is not what you don’t
have, but the fact that you really don’t feel whole or complete.
3. Irritation
At other times, the voices feed irritation. Someone might be
walking down the hallway at work humming his favorite tune,
and the thoughts come up:
“Does he think everyone wants to hear him? Uh, what is he
so happy about anyway? He’s probably next on the chopping
block.”
Meanwhile, who is suffering? We are the ones in pain, but
our brains think that if we project our irritation onto another
person with judgment, we will stop the pain and somehow
find relief. Or when the anger turns inward, it will motivate
us to change even though turning anger inward often sews the
seeds of depression. Or if these voices of annoyance continue to
come up in our relationships and are not discussed, in time the
feelings turn into resentment that inevitably eats away at the
relationship like a cancer. But our experience tells a different
story. Voices of irritation can alert us that something isn’t right
within ourselves or in a relationship. With awareness, we can
use this information to be constructive. When this voice is left
unchecked, we can get trapped in it.
4. Sluggishness
These voices also seem to get in the way when we’re trying
to do good in our lives. Have you ever had the idea of doing
something that is healthy for you—maybe hanging out with
friends, exercising, meditating, or even just fixing yourself a
healthy meal—but then you hear this voice:
“I want to do it, but I’m too tired. I’ll do it tomorrow.”
When we are legitimately tired—maybe we haven’t had
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enough sleep or have had an exceptionally taxing day—we need
to listen to our bodies and rest. But at other times, these
sluggish voices are just another sign that we’re avoiding being
with ourselves because there is a fear that it will be
uncomfortable, so it’s better to just check out. The motive to
shut down is akin to the motivation of our destructive
behaviors, such as using drugs and alcohol, which hide our
strong and uncomfortable emotions, but eventually the voices
of self-blame, self-judgment, and shame creep in anyway,
ultimately feeding the de- pression loop. However, when we
can recognize it, we can face it and when we can face it, we can
work with it and break free.
5. Restlessness
Still, we have more voices that scream of restlessness. These
days our brains are being trained to be noisier, busier, and more
distracted. You might be sitting at a table alone waiting for a
drink, and as your eye catches the smartphone on the table, the
voices start:
“I wonder if I received any new messages. Nope, not one
since a minute ago. What about Facebook, anything there?
Some new updates, not that interesting. Twitter? Ah, that’s an
interesting tweet. I wonder when the drink is going to come?”
All the while, your eyes dart around to survey your
environment, and your leg shakes up and down.
Anytime there is a moment of waiting, most people will
reach for their phone to check notifications, emails, surf the
web, or play with an app. When there is a space empty of doing,
The restless voices rise up. We feel compelled to fill the spaces,
but what we don’t realize is that it’s in these empty spaces, as
Viktor Frankl says, where we have a choice between doing and
being; it’s where possibility and opportunity emerge, and where
there is a chance to make changes for the better.
All of these burdening voices feed the depression loop. But the
Goldstein_Happiness_2P_KH.indd 41 9/18/14 2:08 PM
fundamental question is, Who is behind all these voices? The true
answer is that none of these voices are really ours. The number
one pothole we continually fall into is believing that we are these
thoughts and that these thoughts are facts. One of the main keys
to cultivating an antidepressant brain and uncovering happiness
is the realization that you are not your thoughts or the stories
they tell. Not the ones that tell you how wonderful you are, not
the ones that tell you how horrible you are, and not even the ones
that are neutral. Who are you, then?
When you pay attention, you’ll find that you are the one who
is listening.
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ELISHA GOL DSTEI N, PhD
WHAT LIES BENEATH YOUR THOUGHTS
What would be there if one day all your thoughts were gone? In 1996
Jill Bolte Taylor, a thirty-seven-year-old brain scientist, suffered a neu-
rological trauma: a stroke that took away access to the left side of her
brain, which is the part that is more associated with thinking, analyzing,
language comprehension, rehashing past events, and anticipating future
ones. When her mother visited, Jill didn’t know who she was but was able
to sense her warm energy through tone and body language. Although her
thoughts were gone, she still had her awareness. Consider for a moment
that beneath all your thoughts, emotions, and sensations that comprise
moment-to-moment experience, there is a calm, grounded, enduring
awareness that is always there.
Consider what life would be like if you truly knew at the core of your
being that these thoughts were not facts and that you didn’t have to buy
into them. Take a moment to imagine it. What might come to mind is a
scene of you lying on a beach with ocean waves lapping, and if you’re
lucky, you can take a few deep breaths and actually taste that peace right
now just for a moment.
Some people—but not many—have instant realizations or
“aha!” moments that allow them to break away from these kinds of
thoughts and change the course of their lives significantly. The rest
of us need to work at disconnecting from these thoughts because
the habit of believing them is deeply ingrained in our brains
thanks to many years of practice. One way to start reversing this
habit is by practicing playing with the mind. Take a moment to just
listen objectively, as best you can, to the voices that are there, even
the ones that are just repeating the words you are reading, and
even the ones that question the purpose of this simple exercise.
Play with noticing your thoughts a bit, take control, and shout
out a quote from Dr. Seuss: “I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain
cells.” Try not to think of a white polar bear—any luck? Probably
not. Try to hold onto the image of the white polar bear—any
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luck? If you feel a recurring self-judgment, such as “I am stupid,”
try saying the word stupid thirty times really fast, and see what
happens to your perception of the word. How does it change? Ask
yourself, “I wonder what thought is going to come up next?” and
wait; it always will.
The surest way to become Tense, Awkward and Con-
fused is to develop a mind that tries too hard—one that
thinks too much.
—BENJAMIN HOFF, THE TAO OF PO OH
Getting Hooked
Most of the time, the negative thoughts that feed the depressive
loop aren’t conscious; they come from our deep-seated beliefs
and happen instantly as the brain’s snap judgments. We need to
remember that most of the way we react in this world is driven
by our subconscious in the form of perceptions, judgments, and
opinions, which occur so quickly that they hook us before we
even have a chance. Our minds may judge exercise as “bad” before
the conscious excuse of being too tired or having no time emerges
as a thought. Your partner was “wrong” the moment he opened
his mouth. Without awareness of these snap judgments, the
depression loop speeds up, and we find ourselves stuck in a
familiar pattern again and again.
This is exactly what happened with my client Julia, who was
a successful college sophomore when she learned that a former
mentor whom she had long admired had committed suicide after
a lifelong struggle with hidden depression. This news caused Julia
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to spiral into a state of shock and confusion. She thought about all
the similarities she had always observed between the two of them,
and she worried that if this could happen to her mentor, then
maybe it could happen to her. Terrified, Julia fell into a deep
depression and eventually admitted herself into a hospital for
help.
After leaving the hospital, Julia sought my help. One area we
focused on was recognizing the intrusive thoughts that scared
her. She told me that many times she just found herself in a funk
and riddled with anxiety. I told her that these NUTs can sneak
up beneath our awareness and affect our mood. When I told her
about NUTs, Julia said, “That’s a good name for them because
they drive me nuts!” We both had a good laugh, and that seemed
to lighten her mood. In the days that followed, she ended up using
this acronym to cut some humor into the moments and unhook
herself when she found the depressive loop in action. This helped
her at times to nip it in the bud. Humor can be a wonderful anti-
depressant.
Name Your NUTs
In uncovering your NUTs and naming them, you can become
more aware of them. You can practice training your brain to make
space between your awareness and the thoughts themselves. Get-
ting into that space instantly diffuses their power over you and
allows you to breathe easier. As you practice and repeat naming
your NUTs, you’ll get better and better at recognizing them and
setting them aside.
To explore this more deeply, think about your top five NUTs.
Spend a few minutes writing them down in the space below or
in your journal. When they’re captured on paper, you can’t help
but see the space between your awareness of the thoughts and
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the thoughts themselves, which allows you to start the process of
gaining freedom from them.
In 1980 Steve Hollon, professor of psychology at Vanderbilt
University and Philip Kendall, professor of psychology and di-
rector of the Child and Adolescent Anxiety Disorders Clinic at
Temple University, conducted a study to formulate a list of the
top automatic negative thoughts that people experience when
depressed. Notice the themes of deficiency and hopelessness that
are infused through the list. You can use the findings of this study
below to help you create your list. You may see your own NUTs in
this list, or you may have others:
1. I feel as though I’m up against the world.
2. I’m no good.
3. Why can’t I ever succeed?
4. No one understands me.
5. I’ve let people down.
6. I don’t think I can go on.
7. I wish I were a better person.
8. I’m so weak.
9. My life’s not going the way I want it to.
10. I’m so disappointed in myself.
11. Nothing feels good anymore.
12. I can’t stand this anymore.
13. I can’t get started.
14. What’s wrong with me?
15. I wish I were somewhere else.
16. I can’t get things together.
17. I hate myself.
18. I’m worthless.
19. I wish I could just disappear. 20. What’s the matter with me?
21. I’m a loser.
22. My life is a mess.
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23. I’m a failure.
24. I’ll never make it.
25. I feel so helpless.
26. Something has to change.
27. There must be something wrong with me.
28. My future is bleak.
29. It’s just not worth it.
30. I can’t finish anything.
Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire copyright 1980 by Philip C. Kendall
and Philip D. Hollon. Reprinted with permission.
Right now write down your top five NUTs.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6. *
After you write your own list of NUTs, take a few minutes to
think about them. What patterns do you notice about them? Do
they occur more frequently or less frequently when you’re feeling
well? Are they more convincing or less convincing when you’re
not feeling well? If you tune in to these questions, more often
than not, you’ll notice that these thoughts occur less often and
are much less convincing and believable when you’re feeling well
and things seem to be going your way. That is proof that thoughts
are not facts. If they were, just like the fact that a chair is a chair
regardless of your mood, they would always remain the same.
As you begin to see these thoughts from a distance, you’re
literally priming your mind to objectively notice them appearing
and disappearing more in daily life. You are now relating to them
instead of from them, starting the process of dis-identifying from
them, reversing the mind habits that keep you stuck.
Thoughts are not facts. If they were, just like the fact
Goldstein_Happiness_2P_KH.indd 46 9/18/14 2:08 PM
that a chair is a chair regardless of your mood, they
would always remain the same.
Let’s take this one step deeper now. Whenever I’m working with
people in breaking free from mind traps, I share with them a
series of questions adapted from American speaker and author
Byron Katie that can help crack the NUTs and expose the lies
that they’re telling. As you practice continually cracking them,
you get better and better at creating distance from your thoughts,
dispelling their accuracy and seeing with greater clarity.
To start off, take one of the NUTs you listed above that rep-
resents a belief. This might be something like “I’m so weak” or
“My future is bleak” or “I’m unworthy of love.”
1. Once you’ve come up with the belief, ask yourself, “Is it true?”
Just notice what comes up. You might notice what many people
do, that oftentimes the answer is “Well, yes, it’s true.” This is
the brain initially reacting; it’s the autopilot you live with and
believe is you.
2. Next, ask yourself, “Is it absolutely true?” Can you say that this
thought is 100 percent accurate without any doubt? This
question gets us to look at the thought again, pause, and gain
a bit more distance from it. We have more perspective on the
actual thought itself. At this point, many people might say,
“Well, I can’t say it’s a hundred percent accurate; I guess
there’s a possibility that I can see it in a different way.” Notice if
this is your experience as you do it with your NUT.
3. The third question asks, “How does this thought make you
feel?” Here we’re beginning to see the thought as part of a
cycle—we might say a part of the depressive loop—that is
causing a reaction. Common responses are “It causes
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feelings of sadness, anger, shame, hurt, or fear.” We can go
further and ask, “What impact does the thought have on you
when it’s visiting you frequently?” The answer, inevitably, is,
“It cycles me into feeling moody, depressed, or anxious.” This
tends to lead us to habits of behavioral avoidance such as
procrastination, eating, drugs, alcohol, sex—you name it. But in
this process, we’re stepping outside of it and taking the energy
out of the looping.
4. Ask yourself, “What would the days, weeks, and months ahead
look like if I no longer had this thought or belief?” Check in
here and, as best you can, really imagine this. What comes
up for you? Would you feel lighter, happier, or more capable?
Would you have more energy, be more motivated, or be less
inclined to engage in unhealthy habits? Would it change your
relationships with yourself and others for the better? Would
you feel more hopeful, open, more alive?
5. Finally, “Who would you be without these thoughts?” This
dips us underneath the thinking itself and back to that seat of
awareness that is really who we are. If you check in deeply, you
might even have a sense that you are aware of being aware right
now. This is where you are no longer ensnared by the trivial
nature of these mental happenings in your head, but can finally
taste the mystery of life unfolding.
You can begin reversing the habits of thinking by
(1) actively playing with the voices in your head, (2)
naming the NUTs, and (3) cracking them to dispel
their lies. This starts to loosen your relationship with
thoughts and their hold on you.
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ELISHA GOLDSTEI N , PhD
ENCOURAGE YOUR POSITIVE THOUGHTS
An important element of uncovering happiness is to notice the positive
thoughts that are there and encourage them. Not only does encouraging
positive thoughts help us balance our brains’ inherent negativity bias,
but science also shows that it opens our mind up to greater possibilities.
From time to time, you might notice a nourishing thought arise, such as
“I’m good enough,” “Life is fine as it is,” “I’m worthy of love,” or “What a
beautiful moment.” We can be on the lookout for these thoughts and fan
the flame with a play on these same questions:
1. “Is it true?” Because of the strength of our inner critics, our minds
are often quick to dismiss positive thoughts, so you may notice a
quick “No, it’s not true. I’m not really beautiful, worthy of love, good
enough [and so on] . . .”
2. “Is it possible that it’s true?” Here is where we open the door a bit
and ask if there is any possibility that it’s true, no matter how small
our minds may say it is. The answer inevitably here is “Yes, I guess
there is a possibility.”
3. “If you step into that possibility for a moment, how does that make
you feel?” Two things can happen here. You may find that fear arises:
the fear of the unknown. What would life be like if I stepped into
this light? It reminds me of a poem by spiritual author and lecturer
Marianne Williamson that starts, “Our greatest fear is not that we
are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond
measure.” Remind yourself that it doesn’t serve you or the world to
be in your small self. However, you might also experience a positive
emotion such as joy, contentment, or confidence.
4. “Can I allow myself to linger in this feeling for a few moments?”
When we allow ourselves to savor what’s good, our “good-feeling”
neurons fire together. And as psychologist Donald Hebb put it
memorably, “Neurons that fire together wire together,” promoting
resiliency in the future.
In the following steps, we’ll be uncovering our natural antidepressants.
But before we do that, we have to uncover the bad habits that arise
from these thoughts; the ones that perpetuate the depressive loop.
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Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020
Copyright © 2015 by Elisha Goldstein, PhD
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Atria Books hardcover edition February 2015
For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected].
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Goldstein, Elisha.
Uncovering happiness : overcoming depression with mindfulness and self-compassion / Elisha Goldstein, PhD. pages cm “Atria non fiction original hardcover.” 2. Depression, Mental—Alternative treatment—Popular works. 2. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy—Popular works. 3. Self-acceptance. 4. Compassion. I. Title. RC537.G658 2015 616.85'27—dc23 2014015765
ISBN 978-1-4516-9054-5
ISBN 978-1-4516-9056-9 (ebook)
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